Here is a recipe for the traditional Slovak Christmas sauerkraut soup kapustnica, for 100 people. This recipe will come in handy next time your 99 closest friends ask to come over for dinner…

Ok, you may be wondering why on Earth would I be posting a recipe for such a large quantity of soup. Well, the funny thing is that because of this website, I got asked if I could prepare a dish for the St. Nicholas Day celebration at the Slovak Embassy in Washington, D.C., hosted by the Slovak American Society of Washington. I had doubts about this, given that I had never before cooked so much food. But my friends persuaded me to take this great opportunity. The recipe posted here is more-or-less identical to the kapustnica recipe posted earlier. The difference is that photos are better (my new kitchen has much more light) and that this time I used the right kind of meat, krkovička (pork neck).

This is what the ingredients for a 100 person soup look like. Everything all together cost roughly 90 dollars.

For this soup you will need dried mushrooms. Dried mushrooms taste bit different from fresh ones, since the flavor is more concentrated. If you don’t find any in your grocery store, you can dehydrate mushrooms at home by leaving them uncovered on a paper towel for several days. Or you can lay them out, single-file, in an oven turned to low heat (warm or 200F). Dehydrated mushrooms will keep for a very long time. In Slovakia, it used to be common to go mushroom picking in the fall and then dry the mushrooms for use in winter soups. My family would dry them by hanging them from strings attached between beams in the kitchen. Kind of like drying laundry on a clothes line.

Let’s start cooking. Take a large pot (I used a 16L stock pot for each of the two batches), and add your sauerkraut (including the juice) and the water (voda). You don’t have to be too specific with the water, you can always add more later. You simply want to add enough to at least cover the cabbage (kapusta).

Wait for the soup to come to boil. With a large quantity of water like this, this may take a while. Once the water is boiling, add the pork neck meat (krkovička).

Add a handful of dried mushrooms (sušené hríby, more the better!) and some salt (soľ).

Cover, and let cook for a while. I cook it until the apples start cracking open on the outside. For a big batch like this, this will take at least an hour.

Then, take your favorite sausages (klobása) and bacon (slanina). There is a Polish sausage store in Rockville, MD, which supposedly sells the smoked, dried up and shriveled up Slovak sausage that should go in here. But it was bit out of my way so I used various typical grocery-stocked smoked sausages. I obtained the bacon (two kinds, regular and peppered) from Laurel meat market. This is also where I obtained the homemade sausage, which I cooked the previous day.

Slice the bacon and sausage into pieces and fry. I like to fry the sausage for a bit because I think it improved its taste. Add to the pot. Strain the fat from bacon before adding it.

Add more water if you need to. Roughly speaking, the soup should be half liquid, half “stuff”. Cover and cook for additional 30 minutes.

Finally, take the sour cream (kyslá smotana) and mix in few tablespoons of flour (múka). Add in small batches, stirring in between and letting the cream dissolve.

Finally, boil for another minute or two. Also scoop out as many bones as possible. Manually pull off whatever meat didn’t fall off.

And there you have it, the traditional Slovak sauerkraut soup, kapustnica. Besides the soup, I also prepared whiskey “rum” balls. Dobrú chuť a Veselé Vianoce (Bon apetit and Merry Christmas)!

Here are just few other pictures I wanted to share. The day when I was making this soup was the first time it had snowed here in Washington, D.C., this winter. And it was quite the snowfall! The snow created a beautiful backdrop for preparing this traditional winter soup. Here is a photo taken out the backdoor in my kitchen. Cooking is also a great time to let your friends try your creation. Here is my friend Nicole tasting (and testing) the soup. I think she approved. And finally, me serving the soup at the Slovak Embassy.

71 Responses to “Sauerkraut Soup for Hundred (Kapustnica pre Sto)”

I attended the Sv. Mikulas party and had a bowl of your soup. It was fantastic! I had eaten kapustnica before and had found it mediochre, like meat and sauerkraut in broth. I thought yours tasted far better and a bit like the Thai soup Tom Ka Gai, which is nicely spiced, sour and soothing. I’m going to try to make your version of kapustnica this Xmas, although for a lot less people. I’d also like to try your version with coconut milk and lime.

BTW, if any Slovak-Americans read this, I’m wondering if you ate kapustnica for Xmas. In my family, we ate a soup that had a thick, gravy-like broth and included halusky, sauerkraut and peas. Is kapustnica a dish that Slovak-Americans ate at Xmas? What about pierohi?

Our family has Pea soup (with dried* peas, sauerkraut, onions) and we have a dried mushroom soup. All on Christmas Eve. Can’t recall the name as we now just call it pea soup and mushroom soup (we are 3rd generation Americans now – originally from Litmanova just south of Krakow, but in Slovakia.

Can’t say that I have ever had this soup here, interesting with the apples in it. I will try it out next week when I have a free day to play in the kitchen.

Our Christmas Eve meal was Pea Soup, Mushroom Soup, Pirohi with only potato and onion (and some margarine), and a small piece of fish.

On Christmas Day we usually go American style as we have lots of other people come over who always seemed to expect the Turkey stuffing thing.

It was (and still is) nice to have our traditional way amongst ourselves, then the American way – nice to have the best of both worlds, after all that is what being American is about – Join the family, assimilate, but keep your identity to make life spicier!

Ahoj Lubos,
Your kapustnica at the party was delicious. We hope you’ll make it again next year.

My mother’s cabbage soup (“kapustova polivka,” in our Zemplin dialect) had no meat in it at any time of year. Our Christmas Eve meal was completely meatless, so our soup was “kozari,” our word for the dried mushrooms that went into it (along with rice, sauerkraut brine, a couple of bay leaves, and a roux). I still make it every year.

We didn’t have pirohy either, as this was supposed to be a “fasting” meal. Instead, we had bobalki, little baked dough balls that were “revived” in water and then mixed with ground poppyseeds and honey.

Thanks guys! Helen, my family had a similar tradition. We wouldn’t eat any meat on Christmas, except for fish, until after the Midnight Mass. I remember coming back after the mass (in snow crunching under our feet) to a plate full of smoked sausages and bacon.

Kapustnica is so good. Unfortunately, I’m the only one I cook for that thinks so, so I end up freezing a lot.

I usually make one that uses tomato paste, but I don’t see many recipes for it like that. Maybe i’ll try something different this time. It’s amazing how different people’s recipes are…not just slight variations, even…but almost completely different dishes.

That’s a bummer! I let my friends try the soup today and just about all of them liked it. Care to share your recipe? By the way, I’ve been noticing the same thing about the diversity of Slovak cuisine. We have quite a lot of variations for such a small country. Even with dishes like pirogis. My family never used to make them and I always thought of pirogis as mostly a Polish dish. However, I’ve met quite a few Slovaks and Slovak-American’s who swear by them.

My Slovak grandmother made sauerkraut soup and she added tomato juice about 2 large cans to make the liquid part. Our family calls it red sauerkraut soup. She also put a little rice and either left over pork or whatever meat she had at the time. She always used paprika and it seemed like she made this soup often. We like the soup made with the tomato juice.

I use the following receipe for kapustnica.
It is the recipe from Eva Kellerova, the wife of Branislav Lichardus, the first Slovak ambassador to the U. S. I have received many compliments on this soup.

1 large tin Sauerkraut (27 oz)
Pour the juice aside in a cup and use it later to sour the soup according to your taste, Put the cabbage into a large pot and combine with:
2 Qt. water
Salt, according to your taste
10-15 black pepper grains
1 tsp. caraway
10 dies plums
1 small handful ofo dried mushrooms or
4-5 fresh sliced champignons
1 tsp. minced garlic
1 Tbsp. paprika
Start to heat uncovered, since you have to add the following ingredients:
4-5 slices of chopped bacon
Fry in a pan. “”Fish out” the cracklings and put them into the soup.
1 big onion finely chopped
Fry in the remaining fat until soft and add to the soup.
4-5 links Hillshire smoked sausage
Slice, fry on both sides in a pan.
Bring the soup to the boil and then lower heat to simmer.
4 Tbsp. oil mixed with 4 Tbsp. flour
Fry in a pan until golden and add to the soup. Cook until the cabbage is tender.
2/3 cup sour cream
Stir in the soup. Heat thoroughly for 5-10 minutes, remove from the stove.

Thanks Kathryn! I would love to try your soup next time you make it. From the recipe, it seems to me that the major difference in ingredients is that yours uses plums versus apples. I won’t be cooking kapustnica for a while. I’ve been eating leftovers all week long.

Lubos,
I made your Kapustnica soup the other night and it was great. I added a few hot peppers to the mix so it may have been a little spicier than your version. But still very,very good. Thank you for your website and I look forward to trying more of your recipes.
best regards,
Carl

The only thing I didn’t see in your ingredients was some good hungarian sausage or smoked meat. That’s what I think makes the best kapustnica.
I make stedrovecerna kapustnica(without meat but with prunes and whipped cream) and Silvestrovska kapustnica(lots of meat, no cream. I found it interesting to see apples in your recipe, I never tried that. Maybe I should.

Greetings,
I am so pleased that I found this site. I will try the kapustnica recipe.

I just made a huge batch of halushki. I made them with my Baba when I was a young girl. I did it by memory and they are very good. We are enjoying them now and will serve them to family and friends tomorrow at our Easter dinner. Haven’t made pirohy in many years.

I plan to cook more Slovak dishes when I retire. Will be looking for recipes. Slovak was my first language…everyone in my family is gone and now my language skills have become very poor. Looking forward to retirement to get back in touch with my heritage.
Your site is great.

My Slovac granny always served kapustnica on New Years Eve but hers was made with sauerkraut and smoked fish, usually cod. When that wonderful cook passed away, her recipe was lost, but I have tried to recreate it every New Years Eve since but have never come close to hers. Does anyone have a recipe using smoked fish rather than pork?

Are there lots of versions of this soup. My mother made it every Christmas, I don’t remember her’s having that many ingredients. Just, sourkraut, pork, onions, garlic, bay leaves, peppercorns, caraway seed and dried mushrooms(Usually sent from a relative in Slovakia. Quite tasty. I have tried to replicate her recipe (she didn’t cook from a recipe card, just from memory so I don’t have anything to go on.) I have been successful, sadly I’m the only memaber of my family who likes to eat it so I get to freeze it and have it several times throughout the year.

Thanks Elizabeth. There are few different types of beef soups in Slovakia, but I can’t think of anything that would be specifically beef noodle soup. You can probably just follow the recipe for chicken noodle soup, but substitute some pound or two of beef instead of chicken.

Elizabeth, not sure what you mean by “beef noodle soup”, there are many, and “beef noodle” may mean “soup with beef noodles” of a “beef soup with noodles in it”

If just making a beef soup with noodles in it, I am with Lubos, just like a chicken soup, though when it comes to beef it’s more important to strain it and get all “fat stuff” out of it.

Beef soup should be “clean” really clean, and then you add the rest, some clean cut of carrots, some clean cut of meat, and finally some good noodles.

I love a beef soup made from beef bones., clean as it gets after straining it, and I don’t add any veggies I used to boil the soup. I add a liver dumplings at the end, (if interested I’ll post a recipe) That’s a soup I made frequently and I love it!

I have never had kapustnica with apples or any other fruit in it. Weird. My mom uses a lot less ingredients and it’s much easier. Even I was able to make it, so I know it’s easy! I just forget right now exactly what goes in it. I’ll have to look it up. And I think she puts half & half cream in at the end (or is it whipping cream – before the whipping, of course) instead of the sour cream.
Anyway, her’s is more saurkraut than liquid and we always put it over mashed potatos. I know it sounds odd, but next time you make some, try it. It makes it more palatable for people who find the saurkraut taste over powering and I know we loved it as kids. It was one of our favourites. But not at Christmas – then it was just the soup.

Like yours, my mother’s soup has very few ingredients. Basically 3 large cans of sauerkraut plus 1 quart of homemade kraut. Rinse the sauerkraut and squeeze out, reserving the juice and water. Freeze the kraut for another use. Check the juice for sourness. You want it tart but not overly sour. Add either more water or more juice to taste, ending up with about 2 gallons of liquid. She thickens this with a flour/water mixture and adds pepper and 1/2 stick of butter. For those who prefer, she adds mushrooms, and sometimes smoked herring just before serving. We serve this over mashed potatoes for our Christmas Eve meal. It’s a little slice of heaven. The tartness of the soup and the smooth creaminess of the potatoes are such a good combination. We actually can’t wait until the following Christmas since this is the only time mom makes this soup.

Hey Miro, those are called “pingbacks”. They are automatically generated when some other blog links to yours. I often erase them (since I feel they clutter the comment feed), but left this one in. Allan is currently spending 52 weeks in Slovakia and documenting what he sees. Sort of what I would like to do with my blog if I had the time. In his latest write up on “stuzkova”, he talks about kapustnica, and linked to this recipe. So that’s why you are seeing this here.

Lubos, I wanted to forward the pictures from your trip to Slovakia to my cousin but can’t find the email you sent or the link.
Love to read the variations of the cabbage soup.
Ours is meatless ,for our Christmas Eve meal, made with sour kraut + water, prunes, dried mushrooms , butter ,sour cream, thickened with flour & milk,s&p.
Joan

For those in and around the Pittsburgh area…Pennsylvania Macaroni Company (an Italian specialty foods store in the Strip District) carries dried mushrooms that originate in South America, but are identical to the dried mushrooms that used to come in packages from our relatives in the old country. My father used to pick mushrooms in the woods here and dry his own, but I never developed the talent of knowing the good mushrooms from the toad-stools!

Being Byzantine Catholic, we hold a true fast. The saurkraut soup included dried mushrooms from now Ukraine. These are available in Polish and Ukranian shops. Much stronger than puccini et al. You cook these then add water, bay leaf and barley. Once everything is cooked you add Zaprashka- or a rue with oil, flour and then onions and garlic. Many consider it to taste like Chinese hot and sour soup minus the hot. After Christmas Eve, my dad added ham and or kielbasa!
Love the site.

I am thoroughly enjoying your website. 😀
Thank you so much for the wonderful recipes!

My grandmother was Roman Catholic and her parents were originally from Prussia. She was a excellent cook and her pastries were the finest my taste buds ever had the privilege to enjoy. 😀
She had a good work ethic, was self sacrificing and showed how much she loved all of us through the delicious food and baked treats that she made especially for each one of us.
Her homemade bread, sweet breads, kolaches and jellies were legendary. The thing I miss most around the holidays is her smile, her hugs and her care packages that she sent along with each of us after our wonderful visits.
Every time I make this simple Sauerkraut Soup it brings back loving memories. It is always a treat on a cold winter day and it gets better every time you reheat it.

In a large soup kettle (stockpot), cover the pork roast completely with water and boil until pork is well cooked. While this is boiling, peel and cube potatoes. Remove roast from water and cool meat. Add potatoes to the pork water and boil slowly until tender. While the potatoes are cooking, remove bones from roast and cut into bite sized pieces. Add pork and sauerkraut into the potatoes. Add salt and pepper to your taste. Let simmer. Enjoy! 😀

This recipe is great! I’m eating the results right now, actually. I’m sp happy to have stumbled across this site; my grandparents in Pittsburg are Czech, and I see them at a maximum of 3 times a year, the only times I get to taste real Eastern European cooking. This soup, first taste, immediately reminded me of something my grandmother makes. My kitchen even smells like her whole house does! It makes me miss her and my Deda. But, either way, thanks for the fantastic recipe! I’m excited to try other ones!!!

The soup my mom made has very few ingredients. She used a canner kettle. She soaked the dry mushrooms about 6 packages in water. Then strained the juice so as not to get in any sediment and cut up the mushrooms. To that she added fresh mushrooms until the kettle was half full and covered with water. This was brought to a boil then simmered for about a half hour. In another pot,She cooked rice in some of this juice about a cup full of rice to 3 cups of soup and set aside to be added to the pot later. Then she fried 3 large onions, sliced in butter with some garlic and when soft, added flour to brown to start a roux. It was thickened with sauerkraut juice and added to the canner kettle. More sauerkraut juice only was added to the pot along with salt and pepper. The rice was added last, just before serving. We usually have 16 people for dinner and it all goes.
Since they never wasted anything, the sauerkraut was squeezed to get out every bit of juice possible for the soup but the sauerkraut would be fried in more butter and onions and mixed with the bobalky that has been dipped in hot milk to soften. A huge punchbowl of this was served with the soup and is usually all gone too but in tradition style, the bobalky is eaten before the soup.

Yes, they are little dough balls. They are made from the same dough you make the nut rolls from.The recipe for the nut rolls from my grandmother makes 12 loaves so we make the bobalky with half of the dough. This year I had so many requests for the cookies and nut roll, I sold some.Everyone thinks I should retire and start a business selling these.

Thank you for your response about bobalky. We make about 12 cakes also & make only a few bobalky,but use one or two portions of dough to make prune & apricot buchty. We put the buchty & bobalky in boiling water to soften drain & serve with sauce of melted butter & honey & some poppy seed which is poured over the warm buchty.

I’m married to a Pittsburgh Slovak-American and his family made a very different Christmas Eve soup. It simply combined caramelized onions, mushrooms and sauerkraut juice. In my old age I’ve learned to leave out the sauerkraut juice and make a great cream of mushroom to go with the bobalki! My heritage is Filipino-American and I was wondering about Nicole. Certainly Asian. I’m looking for the potato pancakes “in the oven” which my husband longs for.

Hello Lubos and friends! Just found this site and love it. I’m 2nd generation Slovak born in America. From a very large family. Most from my generation (Family) know little about our Slovak Heritage. I sometimes reach my ‘boiling point’ when trying to convince relatives that we are Slovak….not Hungarian or Austrian or Ruthenian/Rusnyak.

Kapustnica is my all time favorite! I do not use sour cream. I also use smoked sausage or smoked paprika and our family used dill seed instead of caraway seed. But basically the rest of the recipe is the same.

Just a thought. Cooking traditional Slovak foods creates a connection to the ‘spirits’ of our ancestors as well as a bond between scattered Slovak people around the world. We are all related to each other. Even if only to learn a few Slovak words…a little ‘Magic’ may enter your lives.

I spent over 100 days in Slovakia in 2013 (not continuous… mostly for work). I fell in love with the people, food, and just the entire country. I was thrilled to find this website and have made a few things however, one of my favorite memories is getting kapustnica at the Potrefena Husa in Bratislava. That and a glass of biely vino… nothing better! I have tried kapustnica in many restaurants in Slovakia but the one at Potrefena Husa is my favorite. This one is so similar to the taste of theirs – I put sour cream on the side and no flour. Wonderful. D’akujem!

Interesting that you only use pork. My family left Slovakia more than 100 years ago. I remember hearing that fresh pork was used only during certain times of the year when pigs were slaughtered. (most of my family were farmers)…Sausages were a method of long term preservation. They were used long after the fresh pork was gone. Others have mentioned that those who lived in cities could find fresh pork year round. We use ‘brazed’ pork ribs and remove bones before serving. Ribs are full of flavor that other portions just can’t match.

Our father made a slovak cabbage soup that we called zupreska.it was simply sauerkraut without the liquid cooked with cabbage & a little water.made a roux by browning flour in bacon grease adding water so it has consistency of gravy. Then pour over kraut/cabbage, add salt,pepper & lots of caraway seed. Serve over boiled potatoes. Delicious & easy.

I’m from Slovakia. And I know, that in the past were another methods for preservation… canned meat, meat in salt and meat in sauerkraut.
For example, sauerkraut soup with cream is specific for “lowland” and sauerkraut soup without cream is specific for “upland”.
When I was a little girl, my mom cooked sauerkraut soup with cream. Nobody wanted to eat it. Because until then, it only cooked dad and he is from Kysuce where does not use cream.
In “upland” add potatoes to a sauerkraut soup.
I also prefer without.
We distinguish two “types” of sauerkraut soup:

I continue to use salt cured and smoked meat also. Now I’ve learned from you something interesting…For the same reasons our family cooks without cream (I am the only one from a very large extended family to continue cooking a few Slovak foods). Most are from northern area of Plaveč.

I can remember a sparse soup from small pieces of solonina (bacon…I don’t know how you write) and cabbage both fried with a lot of browned garlic and just a few spices.

Thank you so much for the great recipes on this site! My husband’s family is Slovakian so I decided to make a traditional Slovak feast a couple weeks ago. I used several recipes from this site including Kapustnica, Bryndzove Halusky, Detva’s Temper, Zemiakove Placky, Parena Knedla, Uhorkovy Salat, Buchty, and Zemlovka. We loved all the food but the Kapustnica was the big hit! So very yummy! Will definitely make again! Thanks so much.

Hello! Love this recipe, I’ve made it quite a few years now. You mentioned that there’s a specific sausage that is supposed to be used in this soup but it was out of your way. What type of sausage is it? Thanks!

In making Christmas kapustnica soup, what is the most-recommended U.S. dried mushroom variety to use? I’ve seen a few mentioned here, but I’ve seen here and elsewhere that “dubaky” is the type Slovaks often use for this soup. Is dubaky similar to or the same as a mushroom grown in the U.S.? Thanks. Dennis

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